Orly Lobel has more thoughts over at PrawfsBlawg on the question of banning laptops in law school classrooms.
We discussed this issue here a few months ago, so I’ll just add one relatively recent data point to the empirical picture. The Harvard Bloggership conference in April was held in the Ropes-Gray moot court room at the law school, and had wifi enabled. Lots of the professors had their laptops with them, and one or two professors used the wifi to liveblog the conference. But by the middle of the day-long conference, it seemed to me that a large chunk (around half) of the professors in the audience were online checking e-mail, reading blogs, and surfing around to see what was up in Boston that weekend. Most were paying partial attention to the symposium, but they had a lot more going on than just the symposium.
If I had to guess, I would guess that the most common resolution to this issue (at least over the next 10 or 20 years) will be disabling wireless in classrooms but allowing laptops. That’s not so easy to do these days, but then the folks who designed the networks weren’t making that option a priority. But my guess is that this will change.
Aha, the shoe is on the other foot now, isn’t it? Isn’t your sentance that “they [professors] had a lot more going on than just the symposium” somewhat telling? You imply that it’s ok for profs to check their email, read blogs, and surf the internet because these activities allow them to keep up with their important duties. Well can you categorically assume that professors’ activities are more important than students’? If profs have more important things to do than pay full attention to a symposium, then might it not be possible that there is a justification for student use of email during class, too?
[OK Comments: Huh? Jeff, I have no idea where you are getting this. A good rule of thumb is not to accuse someone of taking a position you want to criticize unless you have some evidence that the person actually takes that position.]
At an academic workshop I attended last year, from my back row seat I observed the same practice–lots of law professors surfing and emailing all day long.
I’m with Picker on this one. Make it worthwhile to turn of the browser. Moreover, I think people ought to be free to experiment with how to optimize their time.
Prof. Kerr I’m not sure why you say it would not be easy to shut off wireless in classrooms. It seems to me that there are numerous ways this could be achieved: there are methods of preventing wireless signals to transmit (this is generally done with low-level electrified copper panels), Depending how the network is set up, the access point could be put on a seperate subnet whereby one could not access the internet but could access the local intranet, there are numerous other ways this can be done. Granted it’d take some financing and a little work on the part of admins, but this could be done relatively easily.
The same thing happens in meetings with attorneys and their Blackberrys. Even in the middle of a few depositions I’ve attended recently, all the attorneys who weren’t currently integral to the questioning were typing away on their mini computers.
I’m not sure that banning/disabling wireless in classrooms is an effective solution. For whose benefit would we be doing this? It seems to me that students are going to have to learn their own lessons about multitasking and self-discipline. There is going to be more internet access in the future, not less, and we’re going to have to negotiate a world that is constantly wired. The people who have enough self-control to pay attention when necessary will perform better than those who don’t.
If it’s for the benefit of the professors, well, I can tell you that there are certain professors in whose classrooms nobody surfs the internet, even though it’s accessible. And that’s because those professors give engaging, worthwhile presentations. If a professor’s live lecture loses out to orinkerr.com, well, perhaps that professor ought to figure out how to profess a little better!*
*Tongue-in-cheek, obviously.
Instead of flat-out blocking wireless, I suggest providing enhanced 802.11 services.
I am a (hopefully mature) physician in my 50′s who is attending evening law school.
With laptops, it is possible for me to intercalate notes with my already-briefed cases. Also to cut, paste, and add outside stuff when writing outlines. Also to paste other students’ notes (I occasionally have to miss class for a medical emergency, and get notes from others). Also to insert flow charts and tables.
I also have pulled up from the web the constitution, Federalist papers, and other materials during class, or downloaded cases to which professors referred.
Yes, I check baseball scores as well, during lulls in classes, and have even played free cell during major lulls. Not all of my professors use class time as well as you probably do.
All things considered, though, the laptop contributes much more to my education than it detracts.
As a disabled law student, laptop usage in classrooms is an important issue. I’ve used a laptop for taking notes since I was in 8th grade because I have a fine motor deficit in both hands. When I write with pen and paper for more then a minute or two, my hands cramp and it is difficult and painful to keep going. Typing, on the other hand, involves a different set of muscles, and I’m just fine and dandy.
Sure–you could ban laptops but still allow students with documented disabilities to use them. (In fact, I suspect the ADA would require this!) But then there goes confidentiality for those who are and are not disabled-you might as well slap a scarlet D for disabled on us.
Frankly, if a student doesn’t want to pay attention, I’m not sure how banning laptops will solve this issue. Can’t ban daydreaming, afterall. Perhaps a better solution would be to divide the room so that those who chose to bring laptops can bring them, and those who wish to be distraction free can sit apart from the laptopped.
It’s not hard to block wireless. What is difficult is confining the effects to one room, unless you can get them to panel it with sheet metal or put a metal mesh under the sheetrock.
This is a losing proposition. When I was in law school (in the “olden days” as my kids call it), when lecture got boring and the fear of being called on had long faded, we did crossword puzzles, wrote lists of all the Best Movie Oscars, World Series Champions and other random trivia, or started reading ahead in the casebook. Banning wi-fi or laptops will not solve the attention-deficit problem. Interesting, germane class room discussion will. But then I’m pretty sure that every professor already thinks their class is about as good as it can get.
Vanderbilt Law School disables students’ wireless access during times that they have class scheduled, with professors having the option to turn access back on.
The result is that students just share their log in names and passwords and just log in during class as a friend who doesn’t have class at that time.
Lots of the professors had their laptops with them, and one or two professors used the wifi to liveblog the conference. But by the middle of the day-long conference, it seemed to me that a large chunk (around half) of the professors in the audience were online checking e-mail, reading blogs, and surfing around to see what was up in Boston that weekend.
This is symptomatic of a much more general problem. Far too many people allow their communications to manage them rather than manage their communications.
First, the idea of participants live-blogging an academic conference is both absurd and rude. This is the scholarly equivalent of going out to dinner with one person and then spending the entire time talking on the phone to someone else. In any event, nothing could possibly occur at an academic conference that requires instant transmission to a breathlessly waiting world.
But this is just an element of a larger problem. Instant communication, 24/7 communications does not mean greater productivity and efficiency, it means being a slave to your Blackberry. It also encourages people to ask you inane — and often stupid — questions that they could answer for themselves but are too lazy to do so. I don’t suggest we go back to the days of the telegram when every word of communication cost the sender a buck and people thought long and hard about what they needed to say and if they really needed to say it at all, but there must be a happy medium somewhere.
The expectation of instant availability also pressures you to disseminate your contact information much more widely than you might otherwise wish. I am appalled at some of the cell phone numbers I’ve been able to collect. Once upon a time, these people would have had their calls screened by secretaries — or entire bureaucracies — and now I can phone them up directly while they’re on their vacations.
Perhaps I’m just a neo-Luddite, but I reject the idea that I need to be in constant communication with the entire world. I am certainly not that important. But neither is anyone else so important so as to require me to be available to them instantly at any time. If it’s really a serious matter and you want my undivided attention, send me a letter or, better yet, a telegram.
It seems to me that students who don’t want to pay attention will just substitute off-line activities, like tetris, for browsing the web. I also think that the best way for profs to keep students engaged is either to teach an engaging class, or to require participation and call on people at random (old school, I know, but not really that big a problem). You could get rid of the computers entirely, and disaffected students would still be doodling on a notepad. The solution should focus less on the technology, and more on the way the course is taught.
Suppose I have Verizon’s wireless service (not 802.11 based). Do you suggest you have the right to jam those signals?
But lets turn to symposiums… I don’t know what sort of experiences you’ve had at conferences but many papers/presentations tend to be pretty marginal. You may be at a talk merely because it is at the same session as something important to you or because you wanted to ‘taste’ the talk before deciding whether to ignore it. Either way, switching to other tasks is not only reasonable; it’s a mark of self-judgement.
In this way I’ve always been more approving of the British approach wherein what matters is your test performance, not merely whether you attend class or pay attention–after all you are paying 1) for the professor to lecture (shouldn’t it be your choice to not listen?) 2) for the school to certify your acquired skills (what does that necessarily have to do with your in-class participiation)
I taught a class at Georgia State University Law School last semester and I told the students that during class, a large mirror scrolled down in the back of the class room, so I, in fact, could see what was on their computer screens. A few students actually turned around and looked.
Orin-
Your discussion about banning net access in class raised one questions: What about cities who offer free wireless access?
It seems movements for guarenteed wifi net-access might, in time, curtail any effort by profs or admins to block Web access from the top down. … Banning laptops might be the only way to keep students from surfing, IMing, blogging, etc., as time moves on.
(I’d be interested to hear from SF or Philly where public wifi networks are in the works.)
Honestly, if laptops were banned, I probably would have had to drop out of law school. I have severe de quervain’s tendinitis in both of my wrists and the act of holding a pen or pencil and putting pressure on my thumb for more than 30 minutes sends excruciating pain up my arm.
I never had wireless installed on my laptop so that I wouldn’t be tempted to surf during lectures. But, since they disable wireless in all classrooms during finals, I guess I don’t understand why they can’t do this all the time (and only have it in libraries, lounges, and campus hot spots).
If people don’t want to pay attention, they will find a way to waste time. If it’s not Tetris or the web, it will be sudoku in their spiral-bound notebooks.
There seems a certain irony in banning laptops when an increasing number of schools (like my old law school) are making it mandatory that students purchase them.
And if there’s no internet access, students will play games on their laptops. And if there are no laptops, students will doodle. And if there are no pencils, students will daydream.
Professors who are concerned are a little too worked up about this.
Though it has been years since I was a law student, having been a single mom during law school of a very pretty young daughter, I would think disabling wireless access could put single mothers attending law school and their children in danger of not being able to ascertain the children travel and arrive safely beteen locations while their Mom is at school. Just a thought maybe that no one has considered but should? Maybe there should be a system to give wireless acess to those students who can demonstrate a need?
On another note, the idea of banning lap tops would be vigorously opposed by disabled people who must use them as disability assistive devices. Just another thing I think deserves consideration.
I don’t think there’s a technological problem: we can already do this. (For instance, if Vanderbilt blocked MAC addresses instead of usernames in Marc’s example above, then the password-sharing described wouldn’t do a heck of a lot of good.) While limitless wifi access (as Mike S. suggests) poses a technical hitch, I’d think that could be surmounted as well. (If nothing else, most campuses are quite big: ask the city to black out an area, contingent upon providing wifi access to students.)
On the other hand, the utility of blocking internet access is pretty low. I TA’d for a 1L class in law school, and from my perch in the back of the room could see almost all the monitors. For every student who had Mozilla open to some blog, another had trusty old Freecell going. Indeed, one inspired fellow used the class as his designated Civilization III hour.
So even if technologically feasible, it has to be so easy to do that the marginal utility (which is almost null) outweighs the IT investment. No matter how technology develops, I’d suspect this never catches on.
Sadly, the old tools are probably the best. The Profs who commanded the most attention, at least in my experience, were the ones who put their entire class on call every day, demanded excellence in answers, and were relatively humiliating to the unprepared. An ounce of fear is worth a ton of technology.
Smaller class size also alleviates the problem. Back in the pre-laptop era when I attended law school, I saw very few people doing the crossword or skimming a novel in small classes or seminars. (Of course, that’s costly for the law school).
Making class participation a formal part of one’s grade also helps. Students are less likely to fool around on the computer if they credibly believe that doing so will impact their grade.
I don’t get how this is not technologically feasible. Any wireless access point can be blocked from routing by network administrators. I doubt that the effort required to do this based on authorized requests from professors would tax the IT people. Any wireless access point can be blocked by interference. Whether it is legal for the professor to deliberately jam the signal is debateable. This can be accomplished for under $100. Any wireless access point can be temporarily disabled by unplugging its network connectivity, its power, or by the placement of a strategic piece of aluminum foil.
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